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The best part of 007 First Light is the tutorial montage. It's a small slice of rambunctious mayhem Bond can enjoy before being thrown into a national conspiracy against MI6, where the most important item on his to-do list is impress his fellow 00 initiates and make the cut himself.
But as I break grapples, throw punches, and get away with more than one dirty trick during the close-combat tutorial, this particular brand of rambunctious young adulthood feels familiar to me. The last time I played a game with a protagonist this cheeky and sneaky was back in the PS2 days, but it's good to see the spirit of one of the best Rockstar games ever living on in 007.
Class clown
James and his friends Cressida Bright and Lennox Monroe have just had a bright idea: why put off tomorrow what you can do today? Inspirational words for anyone at superspy bootcamp, but in this case, that "what" just happens to be the next day's capture-the-flag training mission.
The mission itself isn't anything special – it's really there to help put some of the earlier lessons on stealth and combat to the test – but the aftermath delights me. The mischievous trio holds up their trophy with pride as Agent Greenway reads out the mission brief the next morning. To his chagrin, he can't even fault them for the ruse. As Cressida would say, the first rule of spycraft is to expect the unexpected, and the gang swagger off to enjoy a free day off.
These moments of juvenile antics are few and far between in 007 First Light. Bond and company might not be mid-teenage high schoolers, but the context lends plenty of similarities to Bully's Bullworth Academy. MI6's bootcamp might as well be a boarding school, albeit one teeming with young would-be secret agents instead of prefects. There's even a sense of cliquiness involved – Cressida is a blue-blood posh girl (easily a prep), Monroe and Bond started off more antagonistic than amicable (he's clearly the bully), and James has the near-painful charisma of a high school jock who gets by on little more than a wink and the flash of his pearly-whites.
Even the way James fails the task by taking too long knocking out all the lackeys in the club feels Bully-coded.
The Bully vibes truly sink in by the time I reach the nightclub mission. It's the environment Bully's Jimmy Hopkins would have killed to be in – loud music, no teachers around, plenty of girls to chat to – and Bond greets it with just as much excitement.
A bathroom brawl has me flexing my fists once more as Bond swiftly knocks out the angry boyfriend of a girl he may or may not have flirted with. But he has bigger fish to fry, as this night on the town turns out to be the setting of the squad's next training mission.
Slinking through the crowded dancefloor and using his wiles to gain access to the VIP section feels incredibly on-brand for Jimmy Hopkins' school of trickery. The only difference here is that Jimmy was far too young to go clubbing in Bully, and James is simply living out that fantasy. Even the way James ends up failing the task by taking too long knocking out all the lackeys in the club feels Bully-coded.
In a game filled with some pretty dark, upsetting moments, 007 First Light's first few hours offer moments of true joy and silliness. Young Bond is as chaotic and emotions-driven as a teenage boy himself, reveling not only in this strange new world of spywork and subterfuge, but the simple joys of being young and dumb.
It's a breath of fresh air to see such an iconic character in such wildly different parameters, and he's immediately more relatable because of it. So even if we never see Bully 2, I'm glad 007 First Light gives us a glimpse of who Jimmy Hopkins might have become – if he ever made it out of Bullworth's endless summer, of course.
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